Comité Interprofessionel des Fromages
C H E E S E   A N T H O L O G Y

Cantal, or Fourme de Cantal

By Edward Behr

appellation: Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP)

place: Monts du Cantal and beyond (beyond the zone for AOP Salers), Auvergne, south-central France

milk: cow (no breed specified, once Salers, now as a rule Montbéliarde and Prim’Holstein), pasteurized, thermized, or raw

type: large, uncooked, pressed, aged

size: a slightly convex cylinder in two sizes, either about 39 cm (15 inches) in diameter and weighing 35 to 45 kilos or about 20 cm (8 inches) and weighing 8 to 10 kilos

production: 60 farms (out of 850 farms that produce the milk) and 12 dairy plants (of which 7 are cooperatives); 13 affineurs (all but three also make cheese); a recent total production of about 11,000 metric tonnes annually, of which 610 were farm-made

related cheeses: Salers, Laguiole, clothbound Cheddar, and Lancashire (or at least Kirkham’s)

look for: a shop that cuts Cantal to order (as soon as any cheese is cut, it begins to lose flavor through the exposed surface), which suggests that the shop cares; raw-milk Cantal; farm-made Cantal (always raw-milk — “Cantal Fermier” and sometimes “Ferme de…” are pressed into the flat face of the intact cylinder); the rare Cantal made with pure Salers breed milk (“fabriqué avec du lait issu de vaches de la race Salers”); a cheese with yellower interior, suggesting it was made in summer from the milk of cows on pasture and has more potential, although winter cheeses can excel; and the age you prefer: jeune at 30 to 60 days, entre-deux at 90 to 210 days, and vieux at 240 days or more (in aged Cantal, look for a brown crust that shows touches of yellow and orange)

taste: Cantal’s range in breed of cow, process, and age produces a parallel range in taste. Cheeses made from pasteurized milk tend to remain milder and simpler. The youngest Cantal, still relatively soft, has an acidic edge, and then with time the taste becomes stronger and marked by fruit, nuttiness, grass and hay, and umami. The small production of Cantal fermier has the greatest potential.

drinks: There’s a broad feeling that Cantal, like Salers, does no harm to a good red wine and is even a safe choice; nonetheless I suspect white wine is generally safer.

 

Most of France’s cheese appellations were established by legislation, but six of the first seven were protected originally by court decisions and only later by tailored laws. Cantal had been made for centuries by farmers in the volcanic Monts du Cantal in the province of Auvergne in south-central France, when in the 1950s large amounts of “Cantal” began to be produced more cheaply in dairy plants in other regions. Between 1952 and 1955, the price of the cheese fell by a third. The Chambre d’Agriculture of the Cantal Department sued to defend the farmers, and in 1956 the Tribunal Civil at Saint Flour, one of the area’s chief towns, gave its verdict.

Cantal cheeses — “large cylinders of variable dimension with an average weight of 35 kilos” and a crust “touched with yellow and orange” — could be made only on volcanic terrain at an altitude between 600 and 1,500 meters (about 2,000 to 5,000 feet ) from May to October, using milk from cows grazing there. “The harsh, rainy climate” and “volcanic soils rich in phosphoric acid, potassium, and magnesium,” the tribunal said, “contribute to the development of rich pastures embellished by varied and original spontaneous flora, such as licorice, gentian, anemone, arnica, blueberry, etc.” The milk “is not only rich in fat but has a special taste that creates a sort of cru of milk.” The tribunal pointed to the importance of the area’s traditional breeds, Salers and a few Aubracs (a breed centered farther south in Auvergne). Although they give less milk than the breeds from the plains, they are adapted to life in the mountains: “Cantal cheese is the fruit of a terroir because there is an intimate and total union between the animal and the soil.” The farmers in their seasonal stone burons made cheese after each milking, morning and evening, and for decades small cooperative dairies had also made Cantal. The tribunal noted that the dairies’ twice-daily milk-collecting routes were short because the milk had to be still warm when cheesemaking began. The co-ops, “while taking a more technical approach, have no less preserved the traditional methods.” Finally, the tribunal specified the traditional area commune by commune. The judges, it seems clear, were natives of the Cantal defending the place they loved.

The cheese in question was and is big, hard, and dry, so it keeps and improves with age and withstands shipping to distant markets. Cantal was made during the warm months, because only then was the pasture rich enough that the herd of a single farm produced enough milk to make a big cheese. Most of the year-round farms weren’t that high, and the land immediately around them was insufficient for grazing, so the farmers moved their cattle up to the summer mountain pastures. The men lived in the burons in summer, and when the pasture ceased to grow in fall, they returned to their home farms, where their wives had remained and, among other tasks, had cut and dried hay to feed the cows in winter.

After the Second World War, the rural population of Auvergne declined and with it the number of farms and the quantity of cheese, even after Cantal was protected by the 1956 decision. Its requirements were adhered to less and less, as many of the farms turned from the Salers breed to higher-volume Frisonnes (the precursors of today’s Prim’Holsteins), which gave enough milk to produce Cantal year-round. The farmers who switched didn’t necessarily move to high summer pastures, and they supplemented local forage with grain and other concentrated feed. Of the farmers who continued to produce milk, more and more delivered it to dairy plants instead of making cheese themselves. Larger, less artisanal operations got into the business.

Then in 1961 a new law created the cheese appellation Salers Haute-Montagne (“High-Mountain Salers”) to protect the farms that still made Cantal in summer in the burons, giving their cheese its own name. Even so, by the late 1960s there was little market for either cheese. Production of Cantal had spread to lower areas without volcanic soils, and the Salers breed continued its retreat. As farms and dairy plants acquired refrigerated bulk tanks to store their milk, twice-daily collection gave way to every other day and even every third day, and much of the milk was pasteurized. The cheeses were aged for as little as 45 days and then just 30. The first laws to specifically govern the Cantal appellation were passed in 1980 and 1986; they reflected pressure from the large enterprises and essentially recognized the situation as it stood. The cheese had no clear identity. All at the same time, there were a little farm-made high-summer-pasture Cantal, some farm-made winter Cantal, artisanal Cantal from co-ops, and more or less industrial Cantal.

Today, roughly ten times as much Cantal is produced as Salers, and Cantal still comes in diverse forms. The milk can be refrigerated for up to 48 hours before use; it can be heat-treated or pasteurized; and the cheese can be sold after as little as 30 days. Cantal fermier, about 5 percent of the total, does require raw milk, although the farms are allowed to make cheese just once a day rather than twice as they did in the past. Most of the Cantal fermier producers also make Salers; Cantal is their option in winter or before the pasture is ready or when there’s too little pasture and they have to feed hay.

For any Cantal, rennet is added to the milk, and the curd is ready in less than an hour. Farmers, optionally, may set the curd in the traditional wooden gerle (which is required for Salers); its wild microflora can supply all the needed cultures in lieu of commercial ones. Where the curd for many big cheeses is heated to shrink and dry it, the curd for Cantal and Salers is “uncooked.” Instead, whey is expelled initially, in repeated steps, in the presse-tome; the curd is left for about ten hours to acidify; it’s then ground and salted; it’s packed into a mold; and more whey is eliminated during two days in the press.

Cantal was important in trade; within Auvergne of course it was eaten for pleasure, and cheese was the essential food of the region’s poor. Cantal was and is eaten with bread, and it’s one of the cheeses that especially lend themselves to cooking. It goes into soups (soupe au Cantal, with onions and bread), and it tops vegetable gratins. The cheese for cooking is often young or semi-mature Cantal, but many times it’s fresh tome — the cohesive white curd for Cantal before it’s ground and salted. Auvergne’s most famous dish, aligot, is made by working fresh tome vigorously with potato, butter, and often cream, until the mix is smooth and dramatically elastic. The region’s most frequent combination is with potato, but before the potato arrived from the New World, the essential role was played by bread — half-wheat, half-rye sourdough. Patranque was the predecessor to aligot, and patranque is still made: slices of bread are soaked in milk or water, squeezed out, and beaten in a pan over heat with tome and butter until “ça file,” the combination forms strings as it’s stretched, like aligot. Sometimes patranque is given a golden bottom crust. Truffade (from trufa, “truffle,” an old Occitan name for the potato) is made by cooking sliced or diced potatoes in lard, and then tome or young Cantal or some of each is melted over them, and the two are mixed, breaking up the potatoes, which may be further mashed with a fork, making a rough cake that in one version remains a purée and in another is given a crisp golden crust. Truffade was prepared over a fire by the herders in the burons.●

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